Undoubtedly we’ve already met many robot babies in movies and TV shows, but this one, who mimics a human baby so smartly, still astonishes us. The “baby” is made for an upcoming, unnamed television show, and it can create extremely realistic movements such as crying, twisting its body and so on.

Sponsored by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), AeroVironment has created a tiny mechanical flying robot that can fly as real birds. The mini robot is shaped like a hummingbird, remotely-controlled without an external power source to fly, hover, mover forward and backward in the air.

It can travel forward at 11 miles an hour, resist the side swipe of a 5 mph wind gust while hovering without being thrown more than a meter off track. While it is moving, the robot can also shoot some videos so as to help the users collect important data. Due to its outstanding innovation and satisfying function, the Nano Hummingbird was named One of Time Magazine’s 50 best inventions of 2011.

It’s never impossible to see robots act as flexibly as human beings, because there’re many more techniques created to endow robot machines with powerful abilities, and the Elastic USB Cable is rightly one of those great inventions. The new cords turn to be really flexible, capable of being stretched by a factor of 1.5, and thus ideal for producing clothes built with electrical devices or the skins for humanoid robots.

Designer: Asahi Kasei Corporation

Robots are no more solid and cold machines as we’ve ever known. From Harvard University, the new robot is an ambidextrous automation featuring flexible polymers. Its inspiration comes from starfish, worms and squid, and thus the robot is built with inflatable chambers within its legs and central spine to help it move.

These chambers can change their shapes, and they will bend the robot’s skin when filled with air, due to which the robot would then make certain actions. The current robot is 18cm long and is capable of lifting one leg off the ground when other three legs ate on the ground. It moves fast too, crawling through a 2 cm high gap within one minute. Apart from those, the robot can even help to accomplish some difficulty works usually finished by human hands.

Though many of my friends love cup noodles, they seldom know that the first cup noodle was launched by Nissin Food in 1971. Now forty years have passed, the Nissin has collaborated with Japan’s Vstone (JP) robotics to make some Cup Noodle Robot Timers in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of cup noodles. There will be totally 10,000 timers sold to the public under some sort of a lottery system.

Next month at the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France, there will be a six meter high and 3.5 meter wide tower built by flying robots. It totally needs 1500 polystyrene foam bricks to assemble the structure, and all those materials will be lifted and transported by the mobile robots. The installation will be open to the visitors from 2 December 2011 to 19 February 2012.

Designer: Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea

Time is a mystery, while Hans Andersson’s LEGO Clock makes time more complex and mystical. Named as “Time Twister”, the Rubik’s Cube-esque LEGO Clock is constructed with two Mindstorm, five motors and black and white LEGO bricks. When switched on, the blocks will then be rearranged to display the time by communicating through Bluetooth. As the designer offers no detail about its basic principles, I still don’t why and how the clock works. So if you know, hopefully you can share it with us.

Designer: Hans Andersson

Welcome to a new time with your personal robots Luna. It is the world’s first personal robot, which is announced to have the ability to handle almost all kinds of works and even comes with its own app store where additional functionalities such as face recognition would be sold.

It is also built with 8-inch touchscreen, two cameras, wireless connectivity, a three-mic array, and a variety of sensors. Coming soon before the end of 2011, and you may reserve one now.

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How dexterous a hand can a robot have? Probably we would get an answer from the DLR’s Anthropomorphic Hand-Arm-System. The hand consists of 52 drives and more than 100 sensors, and therefore all its tendons feature 19 degrees of freedom (the tendons of human’s hands equate to 20 degrees of freedom). That’s really amazing!

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The Tama-Robo Ball Robot is recently quite popular in Japan and we bet it would soon find some new fans in America. Tama-Robo comes with four light sensors and as a result it will move toward the light whenever the robot “feels” the light. But before you play with the Tama-Robo, you’ll firstly need to put him together. So have you gotten ready for that? The Tama-Robo is soon coming!

Selling Price: $71

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Plant Robot, designed by Japan-based Akira Nakayasu, gets its name not only from the same shape as real plants, but also from the fact that it can make the leaves wave too. It has 169 mechanical branches and each of them is controlled by a separate engine. As a result, the leaves will wave automatically when you sweep your hands across them.

Designer: Akira Nakayasu

We’ll all become a lazy person… I mean, who would ever want to do the cleaning any more, especially when they can get the help from the Floor Washing Robot? It looks smart, but performs rather well in cleaning the floors and hard-to-reach spaces in your rooms. Moreover, the robot can even tell whether or not your kitchens need to be cleaned and offer a most suitable service. Wanna have a try now? Check out the video below before that.

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A special English teacher, a robot, was invited to work at an elementary school in Daegu, southeast of Seoul recently. He is not tall, has a big belly, and walks around the classroom on wheels. His way to teach English is quite unique, that is to communicate and interact with student via a TV display panel on his face. Isn’t that interesting?

It is said almost 30 robots have started teaching English in South Korean and we may see more teaching robots stand in a classroom in the future.

【Via】

A Czech-based student, using Arduino programming, creates this innovative lamp that would automatically run into dark space and illuminate it. It features an “S” shape, consisting of wheels, lights and several other parts. It is also endowed with “life”, which means that the lamp will be nodding its head when giving out light.

Obviously the Robot Headphone Splitter is another gift you need to get for your friends. It comes with a cute look and its two eyes are actually headphone sockets that allow at least two people to enjoy music at the same time. The silver guy is compatible with any devices that have a 3.5 mm headphone socket, thus whenever you’d like to share music with a friend, you can easily make it.

Selling Price: $14

Buy it here

For anybody who dreams of a cozy life, they need a “DreamBots – WheeMe”. It is a palm size robot but performs extraordinarily well to massage your body coz it is embedded with unique sensor technology. So as WheeMe moves, it would gently press your body while never falling off or losing its grip. Isn’t that magic?

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Kid’s Walke is a 1.6 meters tall bi-pedal exoskeleton coming from Japan. Designed to be piloted by children, the exoskeleton suit would move the kids around and help them accomplish certain tasks via the control of hand grips.

Though the exoskeleton is believed to become popular among kids and the cost of suit has been estimated to $21,000, the Sakakibara Kikai still has no plan to put it into production. What a pity.

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Natan Linder and his LuminAR make us love MIT more and love lamps more. The MIT student integrated a small scale digital projector with a robotic arm, creating an innovative interactive system that can help the users to check out images and emails directly on the table top. Its articulated robotic arm can also be used in combination with a laptop or a mobile phone. For a demonstration, continue with the video after the break.

Designer: Natan Linder

Coming from Carnegie Mellon University, Snackbot takes the very name from one of its main jobs: to serve snacks. And the other job of the robot is to serve as a research platform for kinds of researches. It is intended for both fully autonomous and semi-autonomous operation. With various sensors built in, Snackbot could communicate with people through verbal and non-verbal mechanisms, participate in simple sociable activities, distinguish those people around it and learn to recognize new objectives, etc. In one word, Snackbot is a cute-looking robot with various skills.

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Hello, everyone, we’d like to introduce you our new friend, the Nyago Cats, creative robotic toys from Japan’s TakaraTomy. Just keep clapping your hands and these lovely kitties will then start to roll and roll. If you’re considering feeding pets while not planning to spend too much time taking care of them, the Nyago Cats are obviously your best choices.

Selling Price: $79.99

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Recently, a robot designed by Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) is being tested in Kyoto-area supermarket. His name is Robovie-II and his work is to help the elderly with grocery shopping. Firstly, the shoppers should make a shopping list at home on a special mobile device, which will later be detected by sensors at the supermarket. After that, a waiting robot will accompany you to shop, reminding you of needed commodities, introducing certain items and even remarking how delicious the beef seems. Though so far it’s still being tested, I’ve started to look forward to a widespread use of Robovie-II. If we’re really too busy to accompany our grandmas out for shopping, why don’t we create something as clever as us to help her? I have to say, the idea behind the robot is quite great.

Why do we say, these days nobody is still caring about paper books? In my mind, the ever-developing digital storage devices will never completely take the place of paper books. And we do need to store books, especially valued old books in a better way. The British Library has built up a new Additional Storage Building (ASB) that adopts seven robotic cranes to retrieve books. Seven million books are hoped to be stored in the new library.

Based on an automated storage system, ABS promises to provide a quick and accurate retrieval of any books kept on the 262km long shelves. The best part is that: the storage system will sort out high-use items and low-use items, according to the book borrow rate.

Besides, ASB also features a low oxygen environment that can cut the odds of fires. It is said that, as a result, any books stored in ASB won’t the destroyed even without the protection of extinguishing equipment.

It will come into use in summer, 2010.

Let me see …well, the twin robots are just like the two sides of a coin, one is an angle and the other is a devil. For example, when you play chess, the black robot will mess up the chessboard while the white one will guide you a clever move. Preparing a vacation? The black would have already made a flight reservation to Bali Island for you, using your credit card of course, and the white robot? Wow, the considerate guy has collected up your luggage. Not that the white robot is better than the black, but only with both they two, life will truly be splendid.

Robobuilder is the creator of the 5720t ‘Huno’ robotics kit with a special capability of dancing. And even long before Christmas, these robots have already prepared a Xmas dance for the festival, as you can see from the video.

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Researchers from Israel have developed the mini robot that is expected to be widely used in the medical field. Measuring merely 1mm, the robot could move inside vessels (at a speed of 9mm per second) to deal with the clogging artery and inject some drug. And all its actions are controlled by the extracorporeal magnetic field, which means a real-time manipulation and a safety operation. Until now, scientists are still concentrating efforts on advancing the maneuverability of the robot, equipping it with a camera, for example.

The Bathroom Cleaning Robot, from Russia, is an innovative techie assistant to clean and tidy up your bathrooms automatically. You will be amazed at its perfect performance! When connected to water tap, the robot then starts to clean your room with a cleaning cloth. Whatever the showers, bathtubs, sinks, floors or walls, the cute robot can all clean them in an efficient way. More than that, the sucker pads on bottom still allow it to climb up the wall to ensure a thorough cleanliness.

Designer: Anna Karmazina

Well, I believe you have also noticed that clock is a favorite to all designers. But different from those clocks we showed you, the robotic digital clock is for those who understand sign language well, because it shows time all by hands.

Designer：Jongchul Kim

Robot is no longer a fanciful gadget, but what about one that has an iPhone for head and all controlled by it? Still exciting! The cute robot can wake you up in morning, dancing to music and show different facial expressions.

This pool skimmer is driven by the solar power and lets you keep your swimming pool clean in an eco-friendly way. With a pair of solar panels on the top of the skimmer to collect the sun’s energy and store it in a rechargeable NiMH battery, the pool skimmer also can change the station and reduce the work intensity automatically, according to the environment.

Selling Price: $499.95
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A car then, a robot now, and then a car again, has transformer Optimus Prime come out of the movie? In fact, it’s a real transformer robot that is well constructed to morph into a robot from a motorized truck. Though it looks much smaller with a bare12 inches tall than those big guys in “Transformer Ⅱ”, it’s still worth watching. Let’s see more on Youtube.

Developed by Panasonic and Japan’s IRT Research Institute, this dishwashing robot which is called KAR (Kitchen Assistant Robot) can finish washing dish totally by itself.

Video after the break

Some human like robot can walk like a real person or even clime stairs, but jumping stairs seems impossible for them.

Dong Han Kim and his team at the Seoul National University of Technology in South Korea have designed a robot that can jump up stairs using two empty plastic soda bottles. With the built-in sensor, it can detect the upcoming obstacles and then calculate the jump height.

Video after the break

To be frank, feeding fish is a tedious job which is absolutely fit for robot. So you should just try this robotic fish feeder. What you should do is to fill the container with bait, then it will do the rest job for you.

Designer: Ran Xiangfei

Playing hokey game is not an easy job for people, but how could a robot do it? A team of engineering from Nuvation, a hi-tech company, will give you the answer. You’d better think twice before you say that you will sure win this robot.

Video after the jump

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How can a robotic hand see the object before touching it? May be built-in camera is an acceptable explanation. But scientists provide a better way to do this.

Using electrolocation, the fingertips of the robot hand sent out a weak electrical impulse, and approaching objects interfere with than impulse, which allows the hand to form the object before touching it.

Video after the jump:

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RiSe is a new robot developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA in conjunction with several universities. It has six legs, each of which is powered by two electric motors. The variety built-in sensors can detect the surroundings based on which the onboard computer control the legs to fit for different vertical terrains, just like a real gecko, except for the number of the legs.

Video after the break

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If this robot has an extra turtle shaped cover, I bet you cannot tell the difference between it and a real turtle.

Video after the jump

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This trashcan-shaped robot can walk like a crab. Plus, its action is very funny. When you are bored, you can get some happiness from him.

Video after the break:

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Do you think this robot can insert the plug by himself? Help him!

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This is really a fantastic robot. Wanna get more information. Video after the jump

This is an innovative MDS (Mobile/Dexterous/Social) robot from MIT media lab.

Wanna know the advantages of this robot? Just watch the video after the break.

Project Page

This weird robot can function as a universal remote controller. However, the most advantage point is not for the controller, it can even remember what you did and then do it again next time you tell him to do it.

For example, it will ask you “what did you just do?” while detecting infrared signal. And , in the future, he will send the same infrared signal if you tell him to do the same thing as you just answered.

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With 15 sensors and a set of camera, this vacuum can clean your house automatically. It could even remember where it has been cleaned so that it won’t bounce around aimlessly.

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The U.S. Army has awarded the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering a 5 year, grant of 10 million dollars project, which aims to create a robotic spy bat. This spy bat will be a 6-inch robot which could gather data from sights, sounds and smells in battlefield and transmit information back to troops instantly. In addition, with the built-in sensitive navigation system, this robot will find its way at night.

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Different from former bristlebot, this one is made of old computer chip. But, it is still very funny.

Video after the break

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Developed by researchers from Delft University of Technology, this is the world’s first flying machine with a morphing wing sweep, like a real swift. Holland policeman aimed to use it as a monitor soaring in the air.

So, next time you should be careful while seeing a swift on your head.

Video after the jump

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Because of the frequent happening of oil spill, we need an efficient product to decrease the impact of this kind of accident. This OSP robot is a good choice.

It comes with two inflatable booms which could be connected with other’s, so just throw many OSPs into the sea, then they will form a boom barrier to prevent the oil from spreading.

Designer: Ji-hoon Kim

How could a robot dream? NO, NO, this robot just dancing according the the brainwave and eye movements when you’re sleeping. So, if you forget your dream, just watch the dance of this robot.

Video after the break

Readybot challenge, which is a non-profit effort started by a group of veteran Silicon Valley engineers, just launched a video of a kitchen cleaning robot. It is said that this robot could do 30~40% normal choir and even be up to 80% in the future.

Video demonstration after the jump

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